5 Presidents Set To Help Dedicate George W. Bush's Library

Statues of former Presidents George W. Bush (left) and his father, George H.W. Bush, stand at the George W. Bush Presidential Center on the SMU campus in Dallas, where the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum will be dedicated Thursday.

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Originally published on April 25, 2013 10:14 am

We're due for one of those rare moments Thursday morning when the current president and all of his living predecessors will be together.

The occasion: The dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are due to be there along with, of course, George W. Bush.

-- The former president has been looking back at his time in office and saying he doesn't regret the decisions he made. As he told The Dallas Morning News, "I'm comfortable with what I did. I'm comfortable with who I am."

On Morning Edition Thursday, former first lady Laura Bush said the library is not intended to be an institution that will change the public's opinion of her husband. "The point [is] to talk about the history of our country through the eyes of the president," she told NPR's David Greene.

Visitors will first be led through exhibits about some of the issues Bush had hoped to work on at the start of his time in office, including education and tax cuts. Then, the former first lady said, "you turn the corner and there's the huge beam from the World Trade Center standing in the middle of a memorial to everyone who died on Sept. 11."

Interactive exhibits on the war with Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the economic downturn at the end of Bush's administration, give visitors the chance to vote on what they would have done — and then watch videos of the former president explaining his decisions. It's called "Decision Points Theater," as NPR's Linton Weeks explained Wednesday.

NBC News has a story comparing the new library to those of other presidents. It is the most expensive of them all, at $250 million. Private funds paid for the construction, but taxpayers pay for the operation of presidential libraries. According to CBS News, "the National Archives expects to spend $68.7 million in administration at the presidential libraries in 2013."

The George W. Bush library opens to the public on May 1.

Update at 11 a.m. ET. Ceremony Begins:

The national anthem was just sung and the dedication ceremony is under way. We'll put highlights from the presidents' remarks in a new post later this hour.

While George W. Bush will speak last, NPR's Don Gonyea tells us that the other presidents will speak in chronological order according to when they were in office. So it will be Carter first, then: George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama.